My Stepbrother's Dirty Little Secret novel Chapter 135

Chapter 135

Gianna

The heavy doors to his office clicked shut with a sound that felt like a trap springing into place. I followed him The files and my laptop were hugged so tight against my ribs that the corner dug into my skin.

He wasn’t sitting behind his desk. He went to the floor-to-ceiling window, looking out at the city lights. The fabric of his dress shirt stretched tight across his broad shoulders as he moved, the white cotton crisp against hisskin.

I walked toward him, my reflection falling onto the glass windows right next to him. My brain was a messy soup of flickering numbers, dancing letters. I was feeling dizzy, as if the world was tilting slightly to the left, but I had one goal. I wanted him to see.

I put my laptop onto his desk. My hands were shaking, the red marks on my knuckles from the ruler standing out like angry warnings. I pulled out the printed sheets and flipped open my laptop, the screen glowing bright enough to make my tired eyes ache.

“It’s done,” I said, “The final ledger. Every entry is digitized, cross-referenced, and audited. I finished it tonight. That’s ahead of the deadline you gave me.”

I pushed the laptop toward the center of the desk and laid the papers out in a perfect row. I wanted him to see the work. I wanted him to see that while he was laughing in that meeting, I was putting hard work into it. I had drowned myself in a sink and shocked my own skin to get these words right.

Raphael didn’t even turn around. He didn’t look at the screen. He didn’t look at the papers I had stayed awake for days to perfect. He just stood there.

“Is that so?” he asked.

“Yes,” I said, my frustration bubbling up through the exhaustion, “I worked through the night. I skipped my lectures. I mapped everything so there wouldn’t be a single question. It’s all right here.”

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